What's Your Dream Job?
Submitted by John McConda on Tue, 22/05/2007 - 17:31.
At one point in the deep, philosophical art film Office Space, the character Peter Gibbons poses this question, “What job would you do if you didn’t have to work?” His question subsequently breaks down into a hilarious conversation that’s unprintable here....
The scene illustrates a point though. I think everyone who is serious about their career has a “dream job” in mind. It might not be a specific position at a particular company, but maybe it’s a perfect storm of talent, opportunity, and making a notable difference in the world. As unglamorous as software testing can be sometimes, I find it valuable to keep that “dream job” in sight, and then ask myself what I can do to make my current situation more like the ideal in my head.
My first glimpse of inspiration on this idea came from James Bach’s article, Boost Your Testing Super Powers for Sticky Minds written over five years ago. Talk about thinking outside the box! This article was the first to introduce a thought in my head that maybe there was more to my job description than “Script Monkey”. Heck, James even thinks of himself as a Superhero when he’s testing, imagine if my job were more like that! So I started reading more about exploratory testing and thinking about my tasks in a different light. When I was given a script to run, I covered all the steps and then started testing outside of them, trying to develop my own “super powers”. I soon discovered that I could find exponentially more defects outside of my scripts than I could when I was testing within them, and as my powers of exploration grew, so did my count of defects.
Years later, when I became a test manager, I wanted to take the idea one step farther. I wondered what it might look like if we had a whole team of testing superheroes. Some sort of software testing Justice League where we all bring our unique talents to the table in service of the greater good of mankind. Maybe mild mannered Bob here doesn’t look too fearsome on the outside, but put him in front of your new application and he’ll find 10 crippling bugs in 5 minutes. Jyothi's a soft spoken mother of 2 by evenings, but with a performance test tool she can put a crushing load on your website and tell you where the bottlenecks are. Mark is our expert toolsmith; Lisa knows FDA process audits better than our pharmaceutical clients do, etc. None of these names are real, but this concept of the ultimate test team is one of the founding principles we used to build Mobius Labs.
So wherever you may be in your career, I encourage you to pretend you are a member that “Dream Team” of testers, even if you’re the only one. What “powers” would you bring to the team? Which ones do you want to develop further? What are some other practical ways to turn a boring testing job into something above and beyond what the job descriptors ever intended it to be?
The scene illustrates a point though. I think everyone who is serious about their career has a “dream job” in mind. It might not be a specific position at a particular company, but maybe it’s a perfect storm of talent, opportunity, and making a notable difference in the world. As unglamorous as software testing can be sometimes, I find it valuable to keep that “dream job” in sight, and then ask myself what I can do to make my current situation more like the ideal in my head.
My first glimpse of inspiration on this idea came from James Bach’s article, Boost Your Testing Super Powers for Sticky Minds written over five years ago. Talk about thinking outside the box! This article was the first to introduce a thought in my head that maybe there was more to my job description than “Script Monkey”. Heck, James even thinks of himself as a Superhero when he’s testing, imagine if my job were more like that! So I started reading more about exploratory testing and thinking about my tasks in a different light. When I was given a script to run, I covered all the steps and then started testing outside of them, trying to develop my own “super powers”. I soon discovered that I could find exponentially more defects outside of my scripts than I could when I was testing within them, and as my powers of exploration grew, so did my count of defects.
Years later, when I became a test manager, I wanted to take the idea one step farther. I wondered what it might look like if we had a whole team of testing superheroes. Some sort of software testing Justice League where we all bring our unique talents to the table in service of the greater good of mankind. Maybe mild mannered Bob here doesn’t look too fearsome on the outside, but put him in front of your new application and he’ll find 10 crippling bugs in 5 minutes. Jyothi's a soft spoken mother of 2 by evenings, but with a performance test tool she can put a crushing load on your website and tell you where the bottlenecks are. Mark is our expert toolsmith; Lisa knows FDA process audits better than our pharmaceutical clients do, etc. None of these names are real, but this concept of the ultimate test team is one of the founding principles we used to build Mobius Labs.
So wherever you may be in your career, I encourage you to pretend you are a member that “Dream Team” of testers, even if you’re the only one. What “powers” would you bring to the team? Which ones do you want to develop further? What are some other practical ways to turn a boring testing job into something above and beyond what the job descriptors ever intended it to be?